Agility embodies youthfulness, optimism, and cheerfulness. Regardless of age,
everyone likes to be more agile. Agility is also associated with the alertness
of the mind, the quick response, and the witty humor.

Is agility a born physical asset, or is it a physical quality that can be
trained? Like flexibility, Dr. Hu believes that agility can be acquired through
proper qigong training - especially through practicing Wild Goose Qigong.

In this short article, we limit our discussion of agility training to what
we are going to teach in our coming workshop on March 11, 2006. During this
workshop, we are going to learn the first half of WG-III (Kunlun Bagua) and
WG-V (Soft Palm).

I. Kunlun Bagua Qigong - Training of body parts coordination

Please observe how this qigong uses the simple turning over of the palms,
and the natural left and right turn of the body to train our upper and lower
body coordination. So long as you can shift your body weight in an effortless
way, you’ll feel that the turning of your body becomes smooth and easy.
That is what we usually call: “Your body is getting more agile”.

Now let me explain this point from a little different perspective. Please
pay close attention to the coordination of the body movements. Whenever we
move one arm, always balance it with the movement of the other arm or with
the movement of one leg. Never forget the center-periphery relationship. We
need to have two arms moving simultaneously, or one arm and one leg moving
together, in order to form a periphery. Otherwise, we won’t feel the
centers. And this is our first step in agility training.

II. Soft Palm Qigong -Training of the relaxed and soft palms

Soft palms are required if we want to relax our whole body deeply inside
and out. Why? Soft palms help to open up the “Inner Pass” acu-point
above the wrist (PC-6), which in turn, can bring our energy into our center
(lower dan-tian) through our arm and our Conception Vessel. At the same time,
soft palms opens the 12 meridians through letting more qi go through all the
tips of our fingers and even to our toes, which are the extremities of all
the 12 meridians. And once we have more awareness of the fingers and toes,
it will be easier for us to locate the body centers.

In other words, through the simple relaxing and softening training of our
palms, we can achieve our goal of letting all parts of our body be more connected,
and our body movements be more agile.

To be specific, we train our palms to be relaxed and soft while practicing
the following 3 kinds of movements:

1) Walking forward in circular steps, and also in Tai Chi Symbol Bagua Steps,
( as in Movements 10-13; 19-22).

2) Walking backward (as in Movements 8-9; 14-18).

3) Gradually build up the tension in one’s palms and suddenly release
it (as in Movements 23-28).

If you like to train your body and mind agility in a delightful and fun-filled
way, you would like our Wild Goose way of training through body coordination
and through the training of making your palms relaxed and soft.